


stars, hide your fires

by emthought



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, Halfway to a Donut, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2782088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emthought/pseuds/emthought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 4x08. "It wasn’t logical, and she wanted to chide herself for holding onto it for so long."</p>
            </blockquote>





	stars, hide your fires

_Stars, hide your fires / Let not light see my black and deep desires._

\- Macbeth

 

She didn’t want to be awake.

She kept her eyes closed in hopes that she would fall back asleep, doubtful that it would actually work.

She heard Quinn’s breathing from the armchair next to her, perhaps more peaceful than usual but just a bit too erratic for him to be asleep.

He had told her to get some rest. She had resisted, because she had doubted that she was anymore exhausted than he was. She would stay up and they’d make their way through this insanity together.

Obviously, he had proven her incorrect.

He had stayed. She wondered how long she had been asleep for.

She could have sighed. Quinn was good at numerous things, but he wasn’t helping with one particular dilemma that worried her lately –

She thought she might be in love with him. And she really couldn’t be.

She had enough on her mind already. Saul had been captured and that fact alone left little room for anything else in her mind. She owed it to her mentor to be completely focused on finding a solution to the problem that he was currently in.

(Of course, that was the issue, really – what felt right to Saul felt wrong to her, and somehow saving a life had become a decision that she was questioning.)

And then there was Franny. She shut her eyes tighter and tried to think about something else. She didn’t want to think about all of the qualities she lacked as a mother, if she even deserved that title.

If she was going to love anyone right now, it needed to be Franny.

She hated that she’d managed to completely screw up the situation with her daughter, but she couldn’t look at her without seeing so much of Brody. It was inevitable that she almost always remembered that she had essentially sent him to his death. He was a ghost that hung over their daughter, and she had made him that way.

She couldn’t deal with it. She didn’t know how to focus on her daughter without drowning in Brody’s death.

She couldn’t love anyone else if she didn’t love Franny. She owed her that much, to try to put her first.

Besides, Quinn didn’t need her right now. If he was going to be with anyone, it should be someone much more stable than she was. He needed someone who could provide normalcy and positivity as he pulled himself out of the mind fuck rabbit hole that was the CIA.

In short, he needed someone well adjusted. Someone who could ground him. And -

she was absolutely neither of those things.

They wouldn’t work together.

But she can’t help but let her mind wander to what it would be like if they were together.

In an alternate universe, she and Quinn could be exactly what the other needed. They could be in this together, finding a source of light in the fucked up world that they had created for themselves.

It wouldn’t matter that Brody’s ghost haunted her. She saw him when she slept – hanging there, dead. It was a constant reminder of what she had played a part in.

She doubted that she would ever have a clean conscience, but she imagined that, in being with Quinn, she would feel less alone –

because the thing was, she knew Quinn didn’t have a clean slate either. And it didn’t bother her. And if she was lucky enough, her past actions wouldn’t bother him.

They could have some semblance of peace together. Side by side, they could work toward overcoming the demons they had amassed while in the CIA – and not only ones from the CIA, but ones they’d collected throughout their lives.

It was the nicest thought she’d had in awhile.

It wasn’t logical, and she wanted to chide herself for holding onto it for so long.

She heard Quinn stand up. She kept her eyes closed and she heard his footsteps on the floor.

She needed to focus on Saul. She needed to focus on Franny.

Nonetheless, the words spilled out of her mouth as soon as he shut the door behind him –

“Stay.”

 


End file.
